Simpson on Sunday: Tidings of joy from Mugabe's neighbours

By John Simpson

12:01AM GMT 16 Dec 2001

NOTHING has changed in Zimbabwe. No doubt we were foolish to think it might. On Friday, President Robert Mugabe made a speech at Victoria Falls marking the opening of his campaign for the presidential election in March.

When he addressed selected members of his ruling party, Zanu-PF, all the usual angry rhetoric was there - all the usual lack of awareness of the damage his country is suffering.

"I will not have succeeded in liberating the people of Zimbabwe from oppression as long as economic oppression continues," he stated.

Britain was using every trick in the book to sabotage his land redistribution programme, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was a puppet of white interests, and so on and so forth.

Yet Mr Mugabe's speech was - for him - almost restrained. Maybe, after his recent medical treatment, he is more aware that, at 77, he has to take things easier.

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Maybe his doctors warned him that even if he won another six-year term, he was unlikely to complete it. Maybe it's just that he's starting a long and hard political campaign, and wants to leave the real fireworks until later.

The last possibility must, on past experience, be the most likely. From Mr Mugabe's point of view, things are not going too badly - given that the economy is collapsing and food is now short in a land once known for its agriculture.

True, the government is now loathed by a sizeable majority of city dwellers. Official figures put inflation at 98 per cent - it is probably higher - and hundreds of workers are being laid off every week. The price of the staple maize meal is higher than ever in real terms.

There is little foreign currency left to pay for oil, electricity and food imports. A modern cinema complex on the edge of Harare has just closed because there is no money to rent films from distributors. Supposedly, Mr Mugabe is having bunkers built beneath State House in case of trouble.

Still, as long as the police and army stay loyal and are prepared to use unlimited force against protesters, the government is unlikely to be overthrown.

The MDC and its allies have staged repeated demonstrations, but it takes a lot of courage to face up to the tear gas and rubber batons of the riot police; and the prospect of being arrested, charged with affray and perhaps sent to jail is still a powerful deterrent.

So when civic organisations called on people to demonstrate against the proposed new electoral laws earlier this month, it was hardly surprising that only 50 or 60 people turned up. The remarkable thing is that anyone dared to face the police.

The electoral proposals are unacceptable anywhere outside an open dictatorship. They would effectively prevent hundreds of thousands of young unemployed people from voting. The government knows that they will almost all be supporters of the MDC.

Mr Mugabe has said he doesn't want the European Union to send election observers, and a new press Bill will largely prevent the country's remarkably brave independent journalists from reporting on voting irregularities or poll violence. The proposals will make it even easier for pro-government thugs to do what they like to Mr Mugabe's opponents.

At which point, enter a group of cabinet ministers from six countries in the Southern African Development Community. They were visiting Zimbabwe as part of the Abuja agreement (negotiated with Mr Mugabe by Commonwealth and African figures in September), and had come to check on Zimbabwe's promised return to the rule of law. In their final communique, the ministers welcomed the improved atmosphere of calm and stability.

Government officials in Harare were delighted. True, not all of the communique was favourable, but it was extraordinary that a country where things are manifestly becoming even worse in every respect could receive any praise at all from its peers.

Only last Wednesday, the Human Rights Forum issued a report saying there were six political killings and 115 cases of torture in Zimbabwe last month. "Improved atmosphere"? "Calm"? "Stability"?

During the past week the South African rand has fallen to alarming new lows, partly because Zimbabwe is seen to be threatening the entire future of southern Africa.

When the presidents of South Africa, Botswana and Nigeria told Mr Mugabe in no uncertain terms that he must mend his ways, he was obliged to sign the Abuja agreement upholding the rule of law.

But nothing has really changed as a result, and southern Africa will continue to suffer politically and economically until such time as the rule of law is genuinely upheld in Zimbabwe - especially if African ministers continue to pretend that things are improving when they manifestly are not.